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Fuel-cell technology developer Ceres Power has announced a partnership with Honda to further develop its solid-oxide fuel-cell stacks for a range of power-generating applications.
The two-year contract, which is the extension of an agreement with Honda made in 2014, includes the involvement of an unnamed third party which will look at scaling up production processes for Ceres’ steel cell technology.
Ceres, based in Horsham, West Sussex, was spun out of research conducted at Imperial College London in 2001. The company’s fuel cells are 95% steel and use minimal amounts of expensive platinum and ceramics, to reduce their cost compared with other fuel cells.
However, the company has had problems commercialising the technology and has had to solve several engineering and manufacturing challenges, including improving the robustness of its fuel cells, which were found to be weakened when repeatedly switched on and off.
Phil Caldwell, chief executive of Ceres, said that the inclusion of manufacturing development in the agreement with Honda is an important advance.
“This agreement represents a huge endorsement of our steel cell technology, in the world’s most advanced fuel-cell market.
“We are demonstrating that we can successfully deliver on our strategy of embedding our technology into a variety of different power products and markets with the world’s leading companies.”
Ceres has been licensing its technology to OEMs for several years, targeting domestic power-generation markets in Asia, where governments are subsidising the purchase of domestic fuel cells, and the industrial power market for data centres, in places such as the US.